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San Diego North County Coastal Cities Moving Forward On Clean Energy Initiatives

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By John Garcia / SD350.org

During the past year, the San Diego North County Coastal cities have taken steps forward in implementing their Climate Action Plans (CAP) and studying Community Choice Energy (CCE) initiatives, which will enhance their ability to significantly increase their use of Clean Energy in the future.

Three of the cities – Encinitas, Carlsbad, and Del Mar – have formally approved their Climate Action Plans. The Encinitas Climate Action Plan was approved in March 2011. It was not tied to a General Plan and therefore had purely voluntary measures. This month however, the Encinitas City Council voted to draft a new, enforceable Climate Action Plan as mitigation for the housing element of their General Plan and to allocate $100,000 towards its development.
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The Gig Economy: OK If the Profits Went to the Giggers

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There’s nothing inherently wrong with the idea of working a job here and a job there according to the worker’s convenience and other activities. The problem is that the profits go to some centralized corporation rather than being spread out among all the giggers in proportion to their participation in the system.

If Uber or Lyft were a co-op, the profits would go to all the worker/owners instead of a handful of investors. Then the gig economy would offer not only a technique for working at one’s convenience and fitting into one’s schedule whether that schedule might be educational or child care or surfing or whatever.

In other words making up one’s own work schedule so it fits into your life is not a bad thing as long as the enterprise is co-operatively owned and provides not only convenience but worker protections.   [Read more…]

Remembering Helen Chavez: ‘Are We a Union or Not?’

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She played a vital role with husband Cesar Chavez in birthing our country’s first enduring farm workers union

By United Farm Workers

After they were married in 1948, Cesar Chavez would return home after experiencing a fresh injustice toiling in the fields and tell his bride, Helen, “somebody’s got to do something about it.” Helen Chavez nurtured her husband’s dream of organizing farm workers. She and their eight small children gave up a middle class lifestyle in 1962, embracing a life of voluntary poverty to support her husband’s labors.

During the earliest years when he would sometimes return home to Delano, California after days on the road feeling alone and demoralized, not having recruited anyone into his new union, she would encourage him, saying, “Cesar, you have to have faith in God that what you’re doing is right.” He would feel better, go out and try again.

Helen Fabela Chavez, 88, who played a vital role helping her husband give birth to what became the first enduring farm workers union in U.S. history—and sustained him during the 31 years he led the United Farm Workers of America—passed away of natural causes on Monday, June 6 at San Joaquin Community Hospital in Bakersfield surrounded by many of her seven surviving children, 31 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.   [Read more…]

Will They Vote? It’s Put Up or Shut Up Time for Sanders Supporters

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Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was in San Diego on Sunday, speaking at a rally in the parking lot of Qualcomm Stadium. About four thousand people attended the event, which featured music and other progressive speakers.

Sanders told the crowd “our message is the future of America,” contrasting the small donor base of his campaign with the PACs and corporate executives supporting former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. When his speech came to the presumptive GOP nominee, he said that Trump would not be elected “Because, in the year 2016, the American people will not accept a bigoted president.”

Was Sunday’s rally part of a sprint to the finish line for the Democratic insurgent’s campaign? Or was it, as mass media outlets have been suggesting, a farewell tour? Tuesday, June 7th, we’ll find out.   [Read more…]

Nuclear Shutdown News May 2016 : Ripped Off California Ratepayers Struggle for Fairness Over San Onofre

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California Nuclear Ratepayers Still Struggling For Justice Over San Onofre Shutdown Costs

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press (via OB Rag)

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the US nuclear power industry at home and abroad, and highlights the efforts of those who are fighting to create a nuclear free future. Here is our May issue:

On May 17, the Orange County Register ran the story, “How much should consumers pay for the San Onofre shutdown?”

As previously reported by Nuclear Shutdown News, in June 2003, the San Onofre nuclear power plant, located in northern San Diego County, permanently shut down, 20 years ahead schedule.

This followed a scandal involving gross mismanagement and duplicity by its majority owner, Southern California Edison.   [Read more…]

Homelessness and Housing by the Numbers – A San Diego Shell Game

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The San Diego Point-In-Time Count is a federally mandated annual report that identifies the number of homeless individuals and families in the county on one particular day. The 2016 report, which was released at the end of April, showed less than a one percent decrease from the previous year in the number of homeless people in San Diego County.
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San Diegans Participate in LA Action to Break Free from Fossil Fuels

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By Nancy Cottingham / SD350

Over a two week period earlier this month, a wave of >Break Free from Fossil Fuels mass mobilizations was held around the globe. The first action saw hundreds of people peacefully shut down the UK’s largest open cast coal mine in Wales. In the Philippines, 10,000 marched demanding the cancellation of a proposed 600-Megawatt coal power plant. In Australia, 2,000 people shut down the world’s largest coal port for a day, with kayakers blocking the harbor entrance while others blocked a critical rail crossing. In Anacortes, Washington, over the course of three days, thousands converged by land and water at the site of two oil refineries. They marched, led by indigenous leaders, and held an overnight sit-in on the train tracks that led to over 50 arrests.

Closer to home, Los Angeles was the venue for a >Break Free from Fossil Fuels action for people from all over California.   [Read more…]

The US Made a Deal With the Devil in Saudi Arabia

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Did Saudi Arabia Aid the 9/11 Hijackers?

All indications are that our biggest buddy in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, was directly involved with the 9/11 hijackers, and what’s more, exports its extreme form of Islam, Wahhabism, to al Qaeda, ISIS and other groups determined to wipe out the West and Western values. The Senate recently passed legislation that allows families of victims of the 9/11 tragedy to sue the Saudi government for any role it played in the terrorist plot.

The Saudis have gone so far as to say that, if the legislation is enacted, they would dump $750 billion worth of US Treasury bonds on the world market. That would blow up not only our relationship with the Saudis, but the world financial system which is predicated on the US dollar being the world’s reserve currency and its being necessary for the purchase of oil.   [Read more…]

Public Pays for Hedge Funds’ Profits

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By Donald Cohen / Capital & Main

What do 82 public libraries, a Texas beef-processing company and a string of Pizza Huts across Tennessee and Florida have in common?

They’re all managed by the same private equity firm.

Fifteen of those libraries are in Jackson County, Oregon, where public officials are starting to raise concerns over the firm’s ownership of the private contractor that manages them. Facing budget issues in 2007, the county contracted with Library Systems and Services (LS&S), the country’s largest library outsourcing company, to try to save money—but LS&S is owned by Argosy Private Equity, whose mission is to “generate outstanding returns” and “substantially grow revenues and profits” for the businesses it owns.   [Read more…]

The Age of Precarious: 6 in 10 Americans Living on the Financial Edge

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“The more we learn about the balance sheets of Americans, it becomes quite alarming.”

By Deirdre Fulton / Common Dreams

An unexpected medical bill or a dip in the stock market would be all it took to send two-thirds of Americans into financial distress, according to a new poll that finds lingering lack of confidence in the U.S. economy.

Despite reports of falling unemployment, growing wages, and rising consumer confidence, a full 57 percent of respondents to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey describe the national economy as poor. Only 22 percent of people say the economy has mostly or completely recovered from the Great Recession.   [Read more…]

UC San Diego Faculty Call on Regents to Divest UC Funds from Fossil Fuels

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Academic Senate votes in support of divestment resolution

UC San Diego Academic Senate

UC San Diego’s Academic Senate announced the passage of a resolution calling on the UC Regents to divest the University of California’s investment portfolio of stocks in companies whose primary business concerns the extraction and sale of fossil fuels. According to its 1868 charter, governance of the University is shared between the Regents and the Academic Senate. The vote by tenure-track faculty and academic leadership took place electronically over a two week period ending May 11.

The resolution recognizes the threat of global warming and UCSD’s pioneering contribution to climate science. It also acknowledges the risk to the UC endowment and pension funds from the prospect of falling fossil fuel stocks.   [Read more…]

The California Way of Poverty

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Last week, I pondered the obscene spectacle of holding a mega-concert catering to the wealthy in the Southern California desert town of Indio where a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line. The truth is that events like this that underline the contrast between the heedless luxury of the affluent with the deprivation of the poor are not the exception to the rule, but rather, a basic fact of everyday life in our era of historic economic inequality. It’s just the way we live now.

And in sunny California, San Diego in particular, the poor are accustomed to watching the party from the outside. As a community college professor at City College, I am particularly attuned to the painful realities of economic and racial inequality because I see the costs of poverty on a daily basis in the classroom and in the lives of my students who frequently struggle to balance the hard economics of survival and academic success. Sometimes the choice is between books and groceries or rent; in other instances, it’s between childcare and study time. The list goes on and on.   [Read more…]

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